Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Down on the Queue

Yeah, I Netflix. What, you don’t? I like being on the forefront of something. While people are hauling their asses down to Blockbuster or the Red Box at McDonald’s, I’m sitting on my thumbs and waiting for the mailman to bring me my movie. I like it when a product works for me. No late fees. No bored teenagers behind the counter who can’t tell me if “Annie Hall” is under drama, comedy, or classic. No having to get to the store at 10 am on a Friday to get the latest movie.

But now I’m starting to realize that maybe you can have too much of a good thing. Everyone is on Netflix. Everyone has a queue. And so when a new release comes out I get the obligatory “Long Wait” next to my selection. What this means is that rather than getting “Walk the Line” this Monday, I received “The Weatherman”. What a let down!

Now, I have to watch “The Weatherman”, send it back, and hope that I receive “Walk the Line” next time. The turnaround for all this shipping time is almost a week! Come on! I want to see Johnny Cash!

One solution for Netflix would be to just buy more new releases. But this would probably end up costing me money. Another solution would be to send the movie to whoever put it in their queue the earliest. Another solution would be to download the movie for free off the internet and quit bitching.

Also, it has come to the forefront that Netflix has been “throttling” its customers. This means if you rent more than a certain number of movies per month your shipments will start getting delayed. Obviously, the more movies you can get for your $17.99 a month the more you’re saving. Obviously, Netflix does not want to let this happen. The fewer movies you see a month the more money they make.

And I wonder if new releases aren’t sent out to new subscribers first, to give them a nice initial impression of the service. I never used to have “Long Wait” or “Short Wait” but I do now after almost a year. Am I being throttled in other ways?

Anyhow, I used to be up on Netflix. I’ve signed three or four friends up. But now I think I’m down on it. I think I’m down on the queue. I’m not sure.

I might go to the internets and just download everything. Or, I’ll pay more $$ for more cable channels and just TiVo everything. I think I might do that. I don’t like the Red Box from McDonalds. If I rent from there I have to return the movie within 24 hours or they start charging me $1 a day until I own the movie. Another problem is that when I rent or return to the Red Box I inevitably walk out with some of those yummy McDonald’s fries.